


turn my living soul to stone

by IseultOfIreland



Category: Absentia (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Light Angst, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, set during 3x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26896390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IseultOfIreland/pseuds/IseultOfIreland
Summary: A fox in a trap will chew its own leg off. What pieces of themselves have they sacrificed to survive?
Relationships: Emily Byrne/Cal Isaac
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	turn my living soul to stone

_I have a lot of work to do today;  
I need to slaughter memory,  
Turn my living soul to stone  
Then teach myself to live again._  
—Anna Akhmatova, _Requiem_

Afterwards, she lies half on top of him—the narrow bed was definitely only meant for one person—listening to his steady breathing, feeling his chest rise and fall. Rain patters against the metal ceiling; the train wheels click rhythmically against the tracks. Behind her closed eyelids, the world changes from blue to black and back again as light floods in and out. Slowly, she sits up, removing Cal’s arm from around her waist. She doesn’t have the heart to move away or to lie, restless, in his arms.

Her mind won’t rest easy tonight. Her chest feels too tight, too brittle, her bones too tired for sleep. His earlier words have sunk their teeth into her. In the half-light that pours in through the window, she finds her shirt and pulls it back on.

 _I saved my friend_ , he’d said, voice breaking. She longed to absolve him, to tell him there’d been no right choice, no moral alternative, nothing to be done but whatever it took to survive. She stayed quiet. What forgiveness could she offer, with her blood-stained hands and tainted soul? No. That she can’t give; maybe no one can. But she understands too well and, oh, how she hurts for him.

She knows the weight of guilt and how it burrows under your skin until it’s a part of you. A fox in a trap will chew its own leg off. What pieces of themselves have they sacrificed to survive?

She stabbed Harlow, drowned Logan… and she’d do it again. But would she have killed Alice, back in the catacombs, to save Flynn? Her hands had been around Tommy’s neck, that last time. Would she have choked the life out of him if she’d stayed in that primal state of rage and instinct for a few seconds longer?

It scares her, knowing what she is capable of. What she’s almost done. How thin a grasp she has on her own humanity. The person she was, before… _Before,_ would have made different choices. But that’s the thing about resurrection. It comes with a price. No one who stares into the void returns unbroken, unscarred, unchanged.

Outside, the world holds its breath; no cars or flashing signs break the midnight stillness. She watches, mesmerized, as they rattle past pretty houses perched on mountains, under the heavy blanket of night. The people sleeping inside live normal lives, as she had once. They’ve never pointed a gun at a human being and felt the recoil of the trigger. They don’t wake to the rush of rising water, gasping for breath, feeling the walls closing in like a coffin, like a grave. Morality belongs to these sleeping people, who have never had to choose between their souls and their survival.

They haunt her, still, in waking dreams and empty moments. Not the monsters she killed out of necessity, but the people she never meant to hurt. Valerie, terrified and pleading as Emily locked her out, then lying dead in a morgue. Kai hitting the pavement with a sickening crunch. _You’re gonna be okay,_ she’d said, gripping her hand tightly, willing it to be true.

There are things about that day that are burned into her memory. The blood dripping down Kai’s head and pooling on the gray floor of the ambulance; the fear in the girl’s eyes _. Stay with us, stay with us, stay—_

And Tommy—oh God, Tommy. Her heart catches in her throat every time she remembers. Tommy, who she hurt so badly, who followed her lead to his death.

Nick won’t become another face she sees in nightmares, one more person she cared about and couldn’t save. She will bring him home, even if she has to sacrifice whatever remains of her soul, for Flynn. (And part of her knows, for him, she’d do a lot worse.)

Cal shifts beside her, murmuring something in his sleep, and she turns to look at him. Frowning, he reaches for her and it’s so sweet, so unexpected, it makes her smile.

“Shh, I’m right here,” she whispers, reaching out to stroke his hair.

He grumbles, moves his arm until it’s brushing her leg, then quietens. 

She looks at him then, scanning his face in the darkness. Blue light floods in from outside and for a few seconds it plays on his features, lighting the lines on his forehead, the bruise near his eye that’s beginning to swell. He looks softer, in sleep. More vulnerable.

She traces his features as if committing them to memory—softly, softly, her touch feather-light. He’s not a monster, no. She’s known monsters; she’s come face to face with them and bears the scars to tell the tale. Not that she needs them to remember.

He is complicated and haunted and kind. When she’s spiraled—thrown back into the tank, the rising water, the coppery smell of blood—his quiet words and gentle touch have pulled her out and reminded her how to breathe. His hands have held and comforted her, stroked her hair and caressed her cheek, but they have also twisted knives into bodies, fired bullets into the heads of innocents. He has killed and tortured. She’d known that even before tonight’s confession—what soldier hasn’t? But she remembers him standing by his friend’s body, sending him off with a salute, when he hadn’t known anyone was watching. She’s seen him in good and bad and desperate moments, and the man beside her is good, not monstrous. 

_(I locked that monster away,_ he’d said earlier. She’s never been religious, but in that moment he’d looked like some kind of martyr, broken and brave, lit by holy fire. Then the light had shifted and the moment was gone.)

He’s not a monster, not a savior. These are figures for children’s stories, where the line between right and wrong isn’t so blurred and transient. The world doesn’t deal in such stark absolutes. He is light and darkness, both.

“Hey,” his voice startles her. “You okay?”

She nods automatically, then realizes he’s squinting at her because his eyes aren’t used to the dark.

“Yeah,” she says softly, “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

“C’mere.” He reaches for her hand and pulls her half-heartedly towards him, giving her a chance to pull away. But she doesn’t want to.

She wants to lean into him and listen to his heartbeat until it drowns out her thoughts. She wants to close her eyes without seeing ghosts. So she lets him pull her in and kiss her—his beard tickling, scraping slightly—then she wraps herself around him.

“You should sleep,” he says after a while. “We’ll be in Schonberg soon.”

She hums noncommittally in response.

“It’s okay.” He plants a kiss on the top of her head. “You can snore, I don’t mind.”

The corners of her mouth twitch up, a half-smile she didn’t think she had in her. Her eyes feel heavy, so she closes them. _Just for a second_ , she thinks, before drifting off to sleep. 


End file.
